Tag Archives: Fairy Emu dreaming

All lore of the Australian Origine Dreamtime culture descends from the Stars through the Matristic lineages .

The Matristic lineages are the original Dreamtime linages whose traditional lore’s and customs depict the creation lore of the Sky Ancestors, who made them.

These traditions are distinct as being a Matristic Dreamtime epoch and follow strict kinship and Skinlore codes. They are very ancient. Arguably the oldest living lore on the planet. Many global cultures refer to their own matristic epochs as the Sacred Feminine…..In Australia, as the last conquered continent, the Matristic culture still survives, albeit under duress….

Global Matristic culture is then followed by a Patriarchal epoch whose traditional customary lore’s commence with a migration story of people arriving in the southern continent. They are far less ancient and many of the ancestral sacred sites of the Patriarchal lineages were inherited by right of occupation. These traditions have distinct traditions and customs as well and similar Skinlore marriage lore codes

Invasion and occupation of the continent by Colonialists commenced in the 1770, rendering over 300 distinct ancestral ‘countries’, each with their own lore’s, languages and ancestral boundaries conquered with all Origine survivors contained and homogenised as just one race collectively labelled as Aboriginal irrespective of their epoch, ancestral county or kinship skin classifications. This dispossession occurred right across the continent. Ensuing assimilation processes caused further confusion and today the greater global population is unaware of the two epoch lineages, or of the original 300 plus individual counties that once made up the Great Southern Island.

The Matristic lore is metaphorical of creation. It commences in the cosmos, with associated rites, rituals and ceremonies singing the creation of the galaxies, our solar system, our planet and all life upon the planet. Each Sky Ancestors celestial journeys spirals across the celestial skies of our local Milky Way galaxy and project as a holographic reflection of the creation down onto the landscape. As above so below.

Since the Alcheringa, which in the ancestral dialect of the Ngarakbal Githabal moiety means “the beginning”, the lore commences with an ancestral All Mother in the heavens, who appears out of the eastern seas of the most geographically eastern point of the Australian continent, and is terrestrially embodied as the Tweed Volcano Caldera, traditionally the estate of the Ngarakbul Githabul Origine moieties.

The Tweed Volcano Caldera marks the terrestrial ancestral motherland of which the natural lore of which the Grandmother, the Rainbow Serpent and the Seven Sisters radiates in fractal waves following the transits and cycles of the stars which govern all cycles of life on the planet.

In a world changing now more than ever it is time to reconsider the ancestral lores and weigh them against the incumbent patriarchal lores which presently rule the planet….there is much we can learn from the past.

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The Origine cultures of Australia are the oldest living cultures in the world….and the last unbroken Matristic cultures on the planet…….

Matristic Lore is neither patriarchal or matriarchal , but instead is derived from the ancient nomadic traditions which honoured both sacred masculine and scared feminine for their own essential qualities….qualities ‘gifted’ to them from the celestial realms from which all life descends

One of the reasons the Origine have survived for so long is their ability to live in harmony with the grand celestial cycles which impact our solar system and planet. The Origine people’s ability to adapt to change has allowed them to maintain their ancestral traditions unbroken since the Alcheringa, which is the Ngarakbal Githabul dialect for ‘the beginning’ of the dreamtime.

Commencing on the east coast of Australia the ancient matristic lore of the Origine Dreamtime radiates across the continent. Spiralling from the south celestial pole the ancestral creator beings rise one by one in the Australia skies in the unending celestial particle dance of All Creation. Refreshing and recreating the journeys of the Sky Ancestors which birthed our solar system including this small blue planet we all call ‘home’.

For the past 200 years, since invasion, the spirituality of the Origine culture has been deemed primitive and incapable of supporting genuine religious life. Messianic Christianity undermined Origine spirituality in the belief that the Origine had been living in darkness prior to the advent of the church in their lives. As a result the Origine people found themselves the victims of cultural genocide. Their traditions and beliefs swept aside without treaties to protect them, without even official acknowledgement of their humanity until the 1967 civil rights recognitions. And still the systemic dispossession of the ancestral traditional lore’s and customs continues today, despite many voices calling for its preservation and perpetual protection. The oppression and disenfranchising of the Origine peoples continues in an attempt by contemporary [patriarchal] corporate governance to maintain tenure of the rich and abundant resources of the great southern land….a pattern of administrative governance inherited from Rome and used all over the contemporary world today.

All administrative governance is derived from the Roman church doctrines…..all law.

These Roman laws are exclusively patriarchal and have no inclusion of the feminine to balance and sustain the earth in accordance with natural lore…..and so everything and everyone are subjected to entropic decay – and a dying planet

On the flip side the ancient natural lore, commencing with the All Mother, who is terrestrially defined in Australia as the Tweed Caldera Volcano, the most eastern land form of the southern continent, and it still holds the embers of the last fire of the ancestral matristic lore – a fractal lore of increase rights and obligations which once encircled and unified the entire planet …..even now this last fire battles from being extinguished as a result of patriarchal law processes…. and erased from the face of the earth just as the Romans encompassed all of the ancient ‘goddess’ religions of the globe.

However, today, science is validating the profound truths of the wisdom held within the ancestral matristic lores essence. Academic researchers and historians are piecing together the surviving fragments of cultural heritage and working with Origine Wisdom Keepers to reignite the fires of traditional lore and culture of the matristic lineages of Australia in peace and harmony with all nations for the greater good…..the Vision – to rebuild a new global paradigm of community and love for all, from the embers of the old matristic lore. A lore that encompasses and acknowledges the sacred connectedness of every life force and form sharing this precious orb, together….

One Earth. One Sky. One Lore

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Many People from many lands have come to the Land of the Bird Tribes…In Part One we looked at the Pre-Crown arrivals of the Dutch, Portuguese and the Egyptian, to name a few…..and now we come to the arrival of the Three Brothers – escaping the war in the centre of the word.

The Three Brothers Bootheram was also told by Mr Alex Vesper in the 1950’s Civil Rights era….. The Vesper family are one of the numerous direct bloodline descendants of the Ngarakbal/Githabal – from the ancestral Mother Clans of the Bird Tribes…..Today there are over 500 living descendants from that bloodline still residing in their ancestral estate…and they are all proud of their ancient unbroken heritage….A heritage that goes way back to their ancestors of the ‘Dreaming’.

There are many unsung Hero’s within the Ngarakbal/Githabal community…Three of them were Mr Alec Vesper along with Euston Williams and his wife Charlotte and they were instrumental in the civil rights campaigns of the 1950’s…They obtained the correct permission [through tribal protocol]of their ‘Boss’ Elders to speak their Bootheram Lore in order to overthrow the crowns pre-1967 classification of Aboriginal people as Flora and Fauna…The crown laws of those times required them needing to prove they had a religion in order to prove that were Human…which is a totally outrageous concept, but that was the times…

To achieve this feat they spoke about their LORE – and the Bird Tribes descendants worked with the Three Brothers descendants…in unity….overcoming the ancient division between the Lore [and in respect for the ‘Eelmarni’ Marriage Rites that had occurred long ago] ….

This unity of TRUE Reconciliation of the Past divisions of the matrilineal lore descendants and patriarchal lore descendants was THE vital key that empowered the laws to change in 1967….and it effectively united the Aboriginal people, and gave great strength to the achievement of Land Rights and the creation of legislative recognition and protection of Sacred Sites in the 1970’s…and al appeared well, until the crown’s Native Title procedural processes divided them again in the 1990’s….

Roland Robinson collected many Bootheram from the traditional descendants during the 1950’s…He always published them verbatim – unchanged just as their Lore decrees ….One story he collected was from Mr. Alex Vesper about The Three Brothers… In it Mr Vesper is telling the Ngarakbal/Githabal Bootheram of The Three Brothers who were the first people to find the land of the Bird Tribes, and they came in a Sailing Ship…….This story has been handed down by Aboriginal people through their generations. This story can-not be altered – that is the Lore….

…”I am sixty-seven years of age. I heard this story from my Grandfather who was a full-blood of the Ngarartbul tribe near Murwillumbah. On my Grandmothers side the tribe was Gullibul, from Casino and Woodenbong. I heard this story also from many old Aboriginals who came from other tribes…”…

…”The first finding of this unknown land, Australia, was made by Three Brothers, who came from the central part of the world. They were compelled to explore for land on the southerly part of the world because they were forced out of the centre part of the world because of revolutions and warfare of those nations of the central part…”.

“They came in a sailing ship. As they made direct for the south, coming across different islands and seeing the people in those islands, they kept in the sea all the time until they came to Australia, to the eastern part of the continent”.

“There first coming into this land was as Yamba Head on the Clarence River. They anchored just off the mouth of the Clarence. This was the first landing of men in this ‘empty’ continent. They camped, taking out of their ‘empty’ ship all their camping belongings, such as a steel axe and many other things of the civilised race in the central part of the world…”.

“After they had rested from the voyage, through the night a storm started to rise from the west. The force of wind broke the anchor and deprived them of the ship, which was driven out to sea and never seen again….”…….extract Mr Alex Vesper -Three Brothers – Roland Robinson

The Bootheram goes on to describe how the Three Brothers and their families were forced to remain in Australia….They have children and migrate North, South and West……

Other Elders of the moiety provided further information of this Bootheram of how when the three brothers fled the war and arrived with their families the earth had been covered in a great flood…the ancestral Bird Tribe ‘Mother clans’ had retreated to higher grounds….’Nimbinje’ saw them coming and ‘sang’ up the wind….and of the subsequent death of the Northern Brother in an epic war that took place at NIMBIN Rocks ….but that’s another Bootheram for another time….

The Lore was told by Mr. Vesper to overcome the crowns Non-Human classification of all Aboriginal people…..Traditionally the Bird Tribes had been ‘classified’ as not being human by the Paigal [Men]…A lot of epic battles had occurred in respect to the arrival of the Paigal that goes way back in Lore and these events, just like the arrivals of all the peoples who followed after the Three Brothers, are still told within the Ngarakbal and Githabal community…

The relatively contemporary Bootheram of the Three Brothers arrival in the land of the Bird Tribes appears to match the geo-anthropological data post “Long Summer Holocene epoch’ in the Anthropocene [age of humanity] which heralded the collapse of Northern Hemisphere civilisation due to the shift in earth’s orbit forcing human migration as sea levels rose….and …Current mtDNA studies verify the migration pattern as not having come ‘Out of Africa’, but of actually originating in Australia…..

…..“Mitochondrial DNA puts the origin of Homo sapiens much further back and indicates that the Australian Aboriginals arose over 400,000 years ago from two distinct lineages, far earlier than any other racial type.”…..….and further, that…“The Aboriginal racial group has a much higher rate of mutations than any other racial group, which suggests that the Aboriginals split off from the common ancestor about 400,000 years ago. By the same theory, the Mongoloid originated about 100,000 years ago, and the Negroid and Caucasians about 40,000 years ago.”….Professor Cann – Dept of Cell and Molecular Biology – University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa

Scientists are now beginning to look more closely at the vast repository of oral Aboriginal mythology across the continent and have discovered that what had once been perceived as primitive myth is actually important knowledge correlating with and predating much of the northern hemispheres accepted academic disciplines;…..The ‘accepted’ migratory patterns of ancient peoples into the continent 40,000 years ago appears to be the patrilineal line [escaping an ancient war in the centre of the earth?] whilst a matrilineal line was established sometime in the 350,000 years of prior occupation as the Bird Tribes – and continues, in conjunction with the Patrilineal …

Academics are also realising that the same historical tales of epic Dreamtime battles between the ancestral matrilineal lines and migrating patriarchal lines were occurring all over the Australian continent in the same time [epoch] period – arriving in waves, all fleeing from an epic war in the central world of long ago….…and because of the requirement of Bootheram Lore to NEVER be changed, this magnificent LIVING library contains the most accurate portrayal of the REAL and un-sanitized history of Australia….and potentially, the planet…..

If you would like to receive automatic notification of future posts to this site then subscribe to my newsletter… And for more info on the ‘Language of the Birds’ check out Sonya Van Gelders website- Ancient Wisdom of the Ancestors at http:www.ancientwisdomoftheancestors.com …it’s located in the links ….Hoo Roo

Current Anthropological study of Aboriginal Mythology alongside of Genetic Science is allowing us to move out of the ‘flat earth’ theories of human evolution and propel us into the conscious understanding of the big picture of our true origins..…The ancient Mother Clans of the Bird Tribes of Australia

Lots of people from lots of places have come to the ancestral estate of the Ngarakbal and Githabal people over many thousands and thousands of years…Lots of different people from lots of different lands…..They are either refugees migrating to safer locations following cataclysmic earth events, or, they have come to trade resources, etc….some even stayed and, in time, became part of the Bird Tribes….

Bootheram is the Ngarakbal and Githabal word for the “Dreaming – Time before Time”…The oldest Bootheram are sacred stories of creation and they have corresponding ‘Djurebil’, which is the Ngarakbal/Githabal word for Sacred Sites within their ancestral landscape.

….”Sacred Sites are the locations where Spirit ancestors either burst forth into the landscape in the Dreamtime, or withdrew from it to a state of eternal vigilance….These sacred sites are strong because they have been sanctified energetically by the spirit ancestors. As well as providing Earth energy to all living species they are also the location of spirit children and the importance of these sites is reaffirmed by ceremonial and ritual activities at these sacred places…..”…Voit & Drury; Wisdom from the Earth; p 73

Bootheram cycles and there are divisions of these cycles [epochs or ages]…. And, there are areas of ‘light and dark’ within the landscape features…and Ngarakbal/Githabal Lore protocols have specific no-go zones depending on the divisions [gender, level of initiation, totem, protocol, skin descent, access rights, etc.]

Some of the ‘djurebil’ [sacred sites] have multiple Bootheram attached to them…they might be an ancestral creation place, but at the same time they might be the location of an historical event, like epic battles, encounters, or arrivals of peoples from other lands – and, just as creation sites ‘travel’ through the landscape, sometimes historical sites do too – like links in a chain of events…

For the Ngarakbal and Githabal, an historical Bootheram site marks the divisions of the epoch separation [cycles] between ancient matrilineal bloodlines [Feathered Serpent Traditions, or Bird Tribes – “who have always been here”] and the more contemporary patrilineal bloodlines [Three Brothers – “who arrived here”]….

Now, this challenges a lot of contemporary academic ideologies about who the original ‘people’ are…but rapid advances in Genetic Science has revealed that two distinct lines converge in Australia through MtDNA analysis ….This sheds new light on historical perceptions and we have to readdress the ‘academic oversight’s’ muddling ancient Bootheram and historical Bootheram together, which has caused masses of discord within the community…… the crown have used this discord in a very effective ‘divide and conquer’ strategy…This strategy has been instrumental in causing division within the people – most recently in regards Native Title claims against the crown…..It has also corrupted the original meaning within the ancestral Bootheram [which must NEVER change] and in the past 20 years [since Land Rights and Native Title] lots of skewered versions of the Three Brother story have been created…and most of those have been funded by the crown.

What the academics don’t include was the prior visitations and arrivals of people into Australia BEFORE 1770 – Pre-crown…also, the Native Title academics choose to omit the divisions of the matrilineal and patriarchal descent lore’s that govern the djurebil [sacred sites] and their respective access/custodianship rights, etc. for the djurebil sites in accordance with ancient traditional lore and custom…Completely ignoring the important Lore rites and the events of the division [cycles] within the Lore ….and this too has been an effective divide and conquer tactic.

So, let’s briefly look at some of the information that the crowns academics have ‘overlooked’….I’ll start with some maps [from the UK’s own Library] that show the prior arrivals PRE-CROWN……and work backwards from there….

Before the Crown, there was the Dutch – and here is the 1710 Cartographers depiction of New Holland, which is what they called the continent….

And before the Dutch was the Portuguese and their maps are dated 1536 and 1542 respectively….and then their maps got stolen by the French…

….”In the Lusitano-French maps of the world which originated in the year 1542 with Dieppe [above] cosmographers, such as Pierre Desceliers and his school, there is a continental configuration which of late has greatly exercised the historians of maritime discovery….That region, called then Jave-la-Grande. No historian, no documents of the 16th century, mention the existence of such an Austral continent. We also see it disappear from subsequent maps, until long afterwards, when the region looms up again, but this time as an alleged discovery accomplished by Dutch Navigators…That continental land, nevertheless, so far from being imaginary or an invention of cartographers was nothing else thatn Australia, now justly considered by competent judges as having been discovered, visited and named by unknown Portuguese mariners – whose maps furnished the cartographical data used in the Dieppe charts 60 or 70 years before the Dutch first sighted the shores of the extensive country…”…Henry Harrisse

……..”The providence of the Dauphin Map 1536 [above], too, is distinguished. We know it was ordered by King Francis I of France, as a gift to his son Dauphin, later Henry II. How it came to England we do not know, but when we hear of it next it is owned by Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford, one of the principal Lords of the Admiralty in the early 18th Century. On Harleys death in 1724 it was stolen by one of his servants, and being stolen goods was hidden for the next few decades. Dr Solander came to hear of it: and it was acquired by Sir Joseph Banks”…KG McIntyre

Dauphin map with corrections of distortions caused by magnetic deviation and erration

And that is how the English got to Australia….

..”I have a manuscript in my possession, belonging to Sir Joseph Banks…the very curious manuscript here mentioned is painted on parchment with the Dauphin Arms; it contains much lost knowledge; Kerguelen’s Land seems plainly denoted; the east coast of New Holland, as we name it, is expressed”…. Dalrymple- pamphlet on the Chagos Islands [McIntyre :344 ]

But before the Europeans arrived there had been many other visitors from the Northern Hemisphere…..more than 3,500 years BEFORE Cook and all the others the EGYPTIANS came to the Ngarakbal/Githabal lands….

Egyptian map showing aboriginal – 3,300 bc – based on mural from Hierakonpolis tomb mural….on the far right is Australia – and a little man with a boomerang

…Near….“Brunswick Heads stands a mound which appears not to belong…….. Fred Fordham was a teacher at the Brunswick Heads Primary school and had heard the local tales that a grand ceremonial ground existed in the area where aborigines gathered from far and wide……Fred sent his notes and drawings and the answers were returned….. most of this correspondence and original work still exists in the valley…The answers were there. The twisting path was a snake, a kangaroo and an emu were represented, the sun was present, plus a host of others ceremonial symbols. There was only one thing wrong, which didn’t seem to worry Fred. The entire layout, names and all were ancient Egyptology – the sun god Ra and many others appeared. Fred could [still] get no backing and the second world war made people think of other things… – extract Oakes collection AIATSIS ; http:www.ancientwisdomoftheancestors.com – Sonya Van Gelder

Yes, there have been lots of visitors and migrations into the Australian Continent over thousands of years….but it goes back further …way, way back to when the first migrations arrived in the land of the Bird Tribes….which begins after an ancient war took place in the centre of the world….

The Bootheram also records the stories about the ancient war and the Bird Tribes traveling up to fight in those wars…But, there were also arrivals to the land of the bird Tribes who were fleeing from that war…ancient refugees…They are known in the historical Lore of the Ngarakbal/Githabl as The Three Brothers, and they arrived into the ancient landscape of the Bird Tribes on the East Coast because of this war……and there are records of these arrivals [and ensuring epic battles] occurring in many other ancestral Oral Lore histories in this continent…

At this point I should [clearly] point out that the arrival of the Three Brothers in the land of the Bird Tribes was dealt with by the Aboriginal people in their own PRE-CROWN version of Reconciliation way back – through a Marriage rite, known as the ‘Eelemarni’ – and discord and division only reared up again as a result of Native Title [divide and conquer issue] incited by the crown….. But, in order to understand the division cycles within the ancestral and historical, we need to look at the historical Bootheram and understand it as Historical and unrelated to Creation Bootheram…and to do that, we have to look at Lore and geology….

The Land itself is the creation of the Spirit Ancestors – the Fairy Emu Dreaming [Bootheram] of Nguthungulli, the creation ancestor who ‘sings’ the landscape into being as he walks westward – He has Four Daughters and One Son, who become the Bird Tribes – and they were ‘made here, they didn’t arrive here – this is Bird Tribe Lore – Alcheringa [ ancient epoch]……….Then, much later in time, historical events unfold…Now it is the landscape that becomes the enduring ‘keeper’ of both creation and historical events that have occurred at various locations on the land which the spirit ancestor created – thus, corresponding ‘djurebil’ [sacred sites] are scattered within the landscape- layer upon layer – and this is why one site might have many Bootheram attached to it…..

Bootheram are taught to the whole of the community under the careful guidance of the Elders who are consulted in regards to the correct meanings, rituals and responsibilities to those sacred places….The whole community learns the same Bootheram, but, the Higher knowledge may only be spoken of by the fully initiated Senior [Boss] Elders whose have obtained the full knowledge of the meaning, language, song, dance sequences and ritual associated with the site…..the Higher Lore is kept ‘closed’ as it contains elements considered too sacred for the uninitiated or of the wrong ‘Skin’ to know prior to undergoing appropriate initiation into the custodial Lore of a specific site….In Githabal and Ngarakbal Lore no-one is allowed to narrate or perform until correct consultation with the Senior Initiated [Boss] Elders is obtained in the correct ritual manner – this traditionally takes days or weeks because the ancestral lore has a defined sequence of protocols that must be strictly followed…….This ensures that the ancient lore is respected and remains intact for all time.

…”Amongst the different regional groups, the sacred knowledge of myth, song, ritual and ceremony – linked with sacred sites – is passed orally from generation to generation. This knowledge also relates to the meaning of ‘country’, and has a practical function – it helps to differentiate groups of people and it also defines tribal rights to land and resources. Such knowledge is never the sole possession of an individual but is held by a group of people who have been initiated into custodianship of that land and therefore have a right to the sacred information that is associated with it….”…Voit & Drury – Wisdom of the Earth

One Historical Sacred Site in the Ngarakbal/Githabal lands is bordering the Widjabil [Bundjalung proper] ancestral estate and records the scene of an epic battle between the Ancestral Mother Clans and one of the ‘Three Brothers’ who came to the Bird Tribe lands long, long ago…This epic battle took place at what is now known as Nimbin Rocks… The correct Ngarakbal word is ‘Nimbinje’…but, Nimbin was the closest Europeans could get to pronouncing it – ….another sacred site [with multiple Bootheram associations] that links to the historical Bootheram is Mt Burrell/Blue Knob which to the Ngarakbal and Githabal is known as ‘Biorgini’ and it is the home of the ‘Wind Spirit’

‘Nimbinje’ means ‘Hairy Man’ in the Ngarakbal/Githabal language…and this Nimbinje, from Biorgini was from the ancestral Bird Tribe…..and could commanded the Wind with sacred ‘songs’ and rituals….

Three Brothers [Historical] Bootheram has been recorded and published many times. The earliest was recorded in 1892….It is known as ‘The Legend of the Three Brothers’.

The following excerpt from a publication by Rev. Livingstone in 1892 more or less summaries the legend of the Three Brothers arrival in the land of the Mother Clans

….“Long ago Beerung, with his two brothers Mommon and Yaburong came to this land. They came with their wives and children in a great canoe, from an island across the sea. As they came near shore a woman on the land made a song that raised a storm which broke the canoe in pieces….this is how the paigal [men] came to this land…”…

And this arrival happened after a great war in the centre of the earth…..but that’s another Bootheram…

I will post the Ngarakbal/Githabal Elders narration of the Three Brothers arrival in Part Two of Ancient arrivals to the Land of the Bird Tribes… So, If you would like to receive automatic notification of future posts to this site then subscribe to my newsletter… And for more info on the Egyptians visiting the East Coast of the continent check out Sonya Van Gelders website- Ancient Wisdom of the Ancestors at http:www.ancientwisdomoftheancestors.com …it’s located in the links…Hoo Roo

“We are the Bird Tribes…We did not ‘come’ here, we were always here…we were ‘made ’here”. …Marlene Boyd

Women are rarely mentioned in the Anthropological literature as owners of country in their own right or as decision making individuals; they appear as wives and mothers, their relationship to the Bootheram always mediated through another….but this is not always Traditional Lore way…

Millie Boyd was an exception to European patriarchal thinking, and so was her Mother Charlotte Williams [nee. Brown] because they maintained their ancestral lore traditions after invasion and in spite of European Authorities

I was very blessed to have known and worked with the late Mrs. Marlene Boyd….Charlotte Williams was her Grandmother…..Marlene was an amazing being. She loved her country – Ngarakbal country, the beautiful Tweed Caldera…..She told me about her Grandmother’s Bootheram, the Fairy Emu Dreaming….It’s a ‘traveling’ Bootheram – the transcontinental songline – which commences in the Ngarakbal ancestral estate – first place to feel the dawn light of Mother Sun…..It tells the ‘Dreaming Lore’ of one of the Ngarakbal and Githabals supreme creation ancestor ‘Nguthungalli’ who walks towards the west creating the geological features of the landscape as he travels…..He ‘sings’ everything into existence…..

…”….A big rock stands in the sea six miles from Byron Bay

A man named Nguthungulli made that rock. Nguthungulli is our Father. He’s the Father of the whole world. He’s the man we’ve got to be afraid of. No matter what we do wrong, or where we do it, He’ll know. And no man has seen Him…”……Extract form the Fairy Emu Dreaming by Charlotte Williams [Brown]

Marlene Boyd spent a lot of time insisting to me that her people were always ‘here’……..”We did not come here, we were always here…We were made in the west….We are the bird tribes” she would state emphatically……and then she would ‘sing’….

The Boyd and Williams’s families and their relations are survivors of the crown invasion – post colonisation of Terrra Nullius….Australia – Ancient Island of the Bird Tribes which Marlene said was the origin of all the tribes upon the planet….

The whole Ngarakbal and Githabal community is extremely proud of who they are and what they represent….and deservedly so, for the Ngarakbal and Githabal descendants have always been involved at the ‘coalface’ of indigenous political, environmental and, indeed, scientific developments heaped upon then by government and the crown…..

But their association to this land is much, much older than when Capt. Cook sailed past Cape Byron and first sketched ‘Wollumbin’ and named it Mt Warning for the Crown to ‘claim’

on Tuesday the 15th of May 1770…..For their association goes way, back……into the Dreaming, which they call Bootheram…..way, way, way, back…..

.”The Bootheram is one continuous moment STRETCHED – across time and space”, Marlene told me…..”It’s made in the mountains. It’s made in the water….They can take our land, but they will never take our Bootheram”, she would say……She was a proudly Traditional Lore Woman from a very long line of the same, and even though we would be sitting in my beach shack [which had become the Ngarakbal/Nganduwal Aboriginal ‘office’], when she spoke her Lore, she meant business, and the spirit of her ancestors came through her loud and clear……

Marlene was very ‘strong’ about who she was and who the Ngarakbal and Githabal are, and of their place within the ancestral tribes of this ancient continent, of which she insisted had always been ‘here’….…

“We are the Bird Tribes….We did not ‘come’ here, we were always here….We were ‘made’ here….”…when she said this she wasn’t just refereeing to Aboriginal Australians, no, she meant the global peoples – from “the time before time – way, way, way, back”….and she wasn’t the only one saying this either….

“They say we have been here 60,000 years. But it is much longer. We have been here since the time before time began … All other peoples of the world come from us.” ……Aboriginal Elder: Page 122 – “Voices of the First Day”

Marlene’s ancestors had been extensively studied by the scientific academics since colonial times and a great raft of research has been collated specifically about these families….one of those academic studies shows the blood sampling that was taken of her grandparents and great grandparents by the government of the early 1900’s….

Now, the Ngarakbal ancestral women’s ‘Skin Lore’ is Biological Genetics in Native Science….the basis of ‘Skin Lore’ determines ‘right way’ marriages, but is by no means limited to just that…like all Lore it has multi dimension facets and layers of meaning……It’s important to remember that an isolated island nation, like Australia, needed to be mindful of avoiding inter-relation marriages that could weaken the genetic strength and health of its people….and so the ‘Skin Lores’ govern that strictly…..it’s matrilineal descent recorded in totem of bloodline descent – through Grandmothers….much like MitochondrialDNA [MtDNA]…

Marlene was adamant that contemporary science was wrong….that, “the Aboriginal people didn’t walk out of Africa” and that it was actually the other way around…She insisted that the ‘Skin Lore’ would show that…..So, she got me to research the science and then we started lobbying government to use MtDNA in Native Title…The by-product of all this Science v’s ‘Skin lore’ was that she showed me, that what she was insisting appeared to be quiet valid….

The research found that in the last 20 years major advances had been made in the study of blood samples, and, interestingly, they directly challenge any supposed African link to Australia’s ancestral people, and dramatically extend the purported 60,000 years of occupation by ancestral tribes to a FAR, FAR GREATER timescale…this had occurred because of advances in cellular and molecular biology – genetics and their origins….To date, even the scientists who first established the “Out of Africa” theory have readdressed their own work and now concede that Australia appears to be the birthplace of ALL modern human beings….

Most notable of these scientists is Rebecca L. Cann, who is currently Professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa…. Cann was the geneticist who made a scientific breakthrough on mitochondrial DNA variation and evolution in humans, popularly called ‘Mitochondrial Eve’….. Her initial discovery and theory was that all living humans are genetically descended from a single Africanmother who lived <200,000 years ago….this became the foundation of the Out of Africa theory, which she assisted in developing whilst a doctoral student under the supervision of Dr. Alan Wilson, the then Professor of Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley…… Wilson was a pioneer in the use of molecular approaches to understanding evolutionary change and reconstruct phylogenies, and a revolutionary contributor to the study of human evolution…..They had checked all the facts and they were sure that they were right…but they weren’t……

After graduating from Berkeley, Cann continued her mtDNA research. She has since stated that…..“Mitochondrial DNA puts the origin of Homo sapiens much further back and indicates that the Australian Aboriginals arose over 400,000 years ago from two distinct lineages, far earlier than any other racial type.”…..….and further, that……….“The Aboriginal racial group has a much higher rate of mutations than any other racial group, which suggests that the Aboriginals split off from the common ancestor about 400,000 years ago. By the same theory, the Mongoloid originated about 100,000 years ago, and the Negroid and Caucasians about 40,000 years ago.”….
And Professor Cann was not alone in these findings either…Her ‘new’ research led Wilson to visit Australia in 1985 and he too has had to reformulate his previous theory of “Out of Africa”…more and more eminent scientist then added to the ‘picture’ of our global human origins

Roy Simmons of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory states, “Australian data indicated that the Aborigines actually evolved earlier than the African Negroes. There was no blood evidence to indicate the African Negroes had any connection to the Australian Aborigines.”…..

Professor Lanarch of Sydney University concurred with Simmon’s insistence the Australian Aboriginals stand alone. “We therefore have no hesitation in omitting the Negritos as the ancestors of the Australian Aborigines.” ….

Cann and Simmons, along with a growing number of academics have now concluded that Aboriginal people are far more genetically diverse than any other population….according to Cann, 10 times more than Africans….

Added to the scientific findings was the voice of Keith Windshuttle, an Australian writer and historian [authored The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, etc]……Windshuttle stated that “fifty years of blood genetic research has failed to provide any clue to Aboriginal origins”…and elaborated with … “May I state here and now that our extensive blood surveys conducted in Australia, Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, produced no genetic evidence that the Negro even entered the Pacific.”

It seemed that everything Marlene was telling me from the Bootheram was the truth…”Forget everything they taught you Stella and begin again with the Lore”, she told me…it was blind leap of faith to begin with, but over time the Bootheram always turns up trumps……

One day I’d asked Marlene, why would the government academics collude to keep this amazing information so secretive?…..Was it because of maintaining land tenure?…..Was it to thwart Native Title recognition of Traditional Ownership pre-crown?… Could this whole ‘Out of Africa’ concept be part of a global government ideology to maintain tenure and control of the global sovereign lands…and could this be why they change the maps and the original geospatial linguistic attributions of the names on those maps?….Marlene smiled……”Now you’re getting it girl” she said……….

What a wise old woman….

I’ll post the full Fairy Emu Dreaming [in full] in the future, and the Song of Wao – that accompanies it … as only extracts appear on this site at the moment…will also post some of the lobby documents in the future too….so, if you’re interested subscribe to my newsletter so you’ll get them…and check out Sean O’Shea – Byron Bay Artist…..some of his beautiful photo’s feature in my posts…just click on his website is in my links…..Hoo Roo

The ‘Kidjabal’ or Githabul ‘Skin’ are the traditional cultural marriage clan of the Ngarakbal…This ancient ancestral lore begins with Landscape Creator Spirit journeys, starting from the Tweed Coast and traveling across the continent, linking to all the ancestral countries of this vast ancient continent…each cultural block holds the lore within its own ancestral landscape and does not encroach beyond the territorial boundaries of another tribal country .

There are several important Song lines ‘holding’ the Dreaming of ancestral creator journeys commencing from the most eastern most point of the Tweed Caldera, in Ngarakbal lands ….This oral [linguistic] Bootheram [Dreaming lore] links the ancestral names of natural features [places]. The right names has profound meaning to the ancestral Aboriginal people because Bootheram is ‘sung’ [linguistically]…. Thus Spiritual Lore is dependant on the faithful maintenance of the original linguistics of the local area…. Lore, Land and Language are LINKED by and through the Bootheram [Dreaming] and must never be changed.

The ancestral Ngarakbal creators sites and the traditional lore’s and customs which govern these, all sit within the landscape of the Wollumbin Volcano; and the Githabal’s creator sites, along with their traditional lore’s and customs sit within their ancestral lands of the Main Range/Focal Peak Volcano….these two tribal volcano’s lore’s are linked by the ancestral beings traveling journey of creation …and this same system of totemic site and skin association is repeated throughout the Yoocum Yoocum and in turn flows out across the vast Australia continent…..its perfect native biological science…..but more on that later

The Githabul and its marriage clan the Ngarakbal have an ancient history which is told through their Butheram (stories) and yaribirri (songs) that connect people with their country through pathways and song lines.

This is a lovely story about the flame of traditional culture reigniting in a strong positive manner despite the invasion and dispersal attempts of the colonisation processes

Creative journeys abound in Aboriginal Mythology. Two cross the Australian continent & begin from ‘Cugin’ [Cudgen] in the ancestral lands of the Ngarakbal Githabal moieties….

The following Bootheram is called the Fairy Emu Dreaming and is one of several ‘Bootherams [Dreaming Lores] about the totemic journey of the ancestor creator spirits across the land. It was recorded from Charlotte Brown in the 1950’s…….Charlotte Brown was the Ngarakbal wife of Githabal man Euston Williams…

The Fairy Emu Dreaming

…”….A big rock stands in the sea six miles from Byron Bay

A man named Nguthungulli made that rock. Nguthungulli is our Father.

He’s the Father of the whole world.

He’s the man we’ve got to be afraid of.

No matter what we do wrong, or where we do it, He’ll know.

And no man has seen Him.

“….Nguthungulli had a cave in the rock. After he made the rock, he told the four fairy woman, ‘gilarmavell’, to stay there…”.

“….Then he went away from there and walked inland from the coast. He traveled over the mountains with his dog Korung. He had a walking stick, and when he put the stick into the ground He left behind a stone like a basin..”…..

…”As he traveled He left the bean-trees, and He named the different places on His journey. He named Woodenbong [where we are now], Nguthumbung.”

“He went over the range to the head of the Condamine. When he knelt down at the river to drink, He left his handprints there in the stone…”…….

“….Nguthungulli went away out into the desert, towards the sunset. In our language we say that Nguthungulli is away out in the Borrgorr now that means the sea. …”…..

“…The old people knew that the sea was out there. They knew that whichever way the butheram, the story of Nguthungalli went, it was towards the sea, Borrgorr. You can hear the sound of the sea in that word. They had seen then that we were on an island.”……….

“….Nguthungulli has big rocks in the Borrgorr, the sea, where he lives today. Out in the caves in those rocks in the sea, Nguthungulli has four daughters and one son. And his son is called Yar Birrain…”….

Ngarakwal [Yoocum] Totemic Lore as told by Charlotte Williams [nee Brown] of the Ngarakwal Githabal moieties – East Coast Australia……The name Yar Birrain has several meanings , one of which is “First Light”….The summit of this sacred Mountain [known as Mt Warning] is the first land in Australia to receive the dawn rays of ‘Mother Sun’….

The Women of Wollumbin – Part 1

Marlene Boyd – Ngarakbal Gulgan

The crowning centre piece nestled within the beautiful Tweed Valley Caldera of the Australian east coast is a sacred mountain known to all the aboriginal tribes and moieties across this vast land…..

This ancient volcano caldera is geographically the most easterly point of the Australian continent and the summit of the central mountain is topographically the first place the light of mother sun touches the Australian landscape and triggers awake all the ancestral sites across the country. It is a sacred creation place of traditional lore and customary culture that is thousands and thousands of years old. It is also the ancestral home of the Ngarakbal dialect moiety and it’s marriage clan, the Githabal, located to the west – following the pathway of mother sun.

The mountain has many names. One is Wollumbin. A Ngarakbal word for the name of one of the totemic ancestor creation spirits who “made the mountain”, long ago, way back in the dreamtime or the Bootheram, as the Ngarakbal say….For Bootheram is the Ngarakbal word for the dreamtime and Bootheram can NEVER be changed. That is the Lore.

There are many ancestral Lore Bootheram’s for this ancient place. Lores that explain things like the geography, history, hydrology, biology, protocols and the myriads of cycles, to name just a few. These Bootheram Lores were passed down through time unchanged and unchallenged, until colonial invasion.

Recent contemporary post-colonial history tried to teach that the ancient Bootheram Lores and cultural wisdoms of the Ngarakbal no longer existed. Having invested decades utilizing divide and conquer war techniques in the attempt to eradicate the wisdom of the ancients and replace the ancient Lores with their own, the crown failed. For the lore is strong and alive.

So how did this ancient lore wisdom survive?….well, It is Lore protocol to never speak of Lore in any country other than your own ancestral country…and there were many tribal countries before invasion…..and within these countries there are men’s lores and there are women’s lores…..that is the Lore and it is NEVER to be disrespected or changed…the traditional penalty is death.

So I am going to tell you the story of some of the amazing Ngarakbal and Githabal women….the Women of Wollumbin…the “Keepers of the Flame” of the sacred feminine Seven Sisters Lore…descendants of Warriors….Survivors of the 100 year holocaust of invasion…..and how they kept their ancient traditional Lores and customs alive by singing their lifeforce into the cultural embers of their traditional volcano home, as it always has been since the beginning of time.

Marlene Shanker Boyd – 20th April 1945 – 22nd of February 2007.

Marlene Boyd, her ancestors and her family are an intrinsic part of the Tweed Valley landscape, history and of the ancient origine Lore of Australia. A deeply spiritual woman, her life, and her purpose was always one of responsibility to, and struggle for, her traditional matrilineal lore and culture to be given recognition, and through that recognition, survival….despite determined opposition she fought for it’s truth all of her life.

Born on the 20th April 1945; into the Ngarakbal Nganduwal Aboriginal Moiety of the Wollumbin Volcano. Born “In-Country” and schooled at Middle Pocket, Billinudgel, not far from beautiful Byron Bay, Marlene Boyd was the youngest daughter of a traditional skin-lore marriage between a Ngarakbal man Chris Boyd and his Githabal wife Millie.

Marlene came from a long line of warriors. Her Great Great Grandfather was Kippa Tommy Boyd/Andrews who was incarcerated at the Nerang Aboriginal Reserve in South East Queensland, an area which is the northern part of the famous Australian Gold Coast today.

She was the Great Grand Daughter of ‘King’ Billy Andrews of Murwillumbah; though ‘King’ was a title given by the crown and of no traditional relevance to ancestral culture it served to identify the leading elders of the communities and whom could ‘speak’ the Lore on behalf of the tribal moieties remnant surviving peoples.

Through her maternal grandmother, Charlotte Brown, Marlene was a direct blood descendant of Wollumbin Johnny [Brown] of Eungella, or ’Ngungulla’ which was how she pronounced it in her dialect. Ngungulla, it’s lush rain forested ridges and crystal clear rivers lay at the foot of the central sacred mountain. The very heart of the Ngarakbal traditional lands and lore.

Wollumbin Johnny [Brown] was a fierce warrior who rallied to push invading native police forces from the original Murwillumbah settlement which had been established at Byangum, where the two rivers meet. His small resistance army fought the invaders back downriver from the sacred mountain, pushing them to the Cudgen ridge were the police had strategically located their main fort. From this fort a clear view of the caldera and the sea provided a stronghold against the rebel Aboriginal peoples. Fearless warriors who braved the crowns guns, themselves armed only with wooden spears, in one last heroic attempt to stop the relentless occupation of their lands. …’King’ Brown [Wollumbin Johnny] had fought relentlessly against the invading forces but was eventually captured and severely punished. Under the heartless dispersal laws of those times he was systematically relocated away from his traditional country. Sent to a number of police Labour Reserves – enslaved for over 15 years. Two of his relocations included Barambah Labour Camp [now Cherbourgh Aboriginal Reserve], with his last incarceration being at Tin Can Bay Aboriginal Labour Camp in South East Queensland near Gympie. From there he managed to escaped and returned south, traveling over 400km to his ancestral Ngarakwal home. His remains were traditionally tree buried in Eungella.

Marlene Boyd was herself an activist, born into an activist family. A true child of the Aboriginal Human Rights Revolution Campaign’s which commenced in the late 1950’s. She was 15 years old before she was legally classified as a human being by the Crown. Marlene had witnessed her grandparents, Euston Williams and Charlotte Brown struggle tirelessly until successfully achieving Human Rights recognition for their people in 1967. Prior to the referendum of 1967 all Aboriginal people were classified as flora and fauna. They had no legal status as being human being. That abhorrent legislation existed only 48 years ago.

Marlene Boyd and her family are amongst the most highly regarded Aboriginal Lore keepers and Activists ever produced by this country. The Ngarakbal and Githabal images, language, culture and song have been collected and studied by our most noted academics and educational institutions since the 1800’s, and Marlene furthered this work with many of today’s academics and film makers recording her living culture for her children and grandchildren to proudly follow down through time. Unbroken ancient traditional lore and culture.

Marlene’s Githabal Mother, Millie Boyd [nee; Williams], was a most highly regarded and respected East Coast Elder who became known internationally as a tribal ‘Clever Woman’, teaching ancestral culture, lore and custom of her people – she, like her elders before her was an activist – fanning the embers of her culture to survive…a true giantess amongst her people.

Marlene’s Father, Chris Boyd, had been a Labourer in the Tweed. In those pre-human rights recognition day’s Aboriginal people could not leave the reservations unless they had an official police labour work permit. Chris Boyd and his wife Millie managed to obtain labour permits and ‘escaped’ with their children from the suffering and deprivation on the crowded reservations by returning to their ancestral Ngarakbal country. Throughout Marlene’s and her brothers and sisters childhood the family lived and worked in the Tweed. They resided in several police permit locations at Dunbible, Billinudgel, Terranora, and Duranbah, working on seasonal banana, sugar cane and small crop plantations.

The family often visited friends and relations living on what was once Greenbank Island Aboriginal Reserve in the mouth of the Tweed River, to attended Church services there and at Fingal Heads and also at the Bag Church site in South Tweed Heads….Church was the only means of allowing gatherings in those times…..These clever people used the church meetings as a smokescreen to hide them from the authorities ever watching eyes and ears…and all the while they discussed the need for recognition of their status as flora and fauna to be changed…for them to legally be human beings….for their ancestral lore to be respected.

As large numbers within the coastal churches grew secretly campaigning the Human Rights movement , the young Boyd’s would take messages from Greenbank Island Aboriginal Reserve back to their grandparents, Euston and Charlotte, who were leaders amongst the Githabul activists and still living on the crowded Woodenbong Aboriginal Reserve Station to the west…. The young Boyd family regularly travelled [under police permit] this journey to assist their Aboriginal Elders in lobbying for the recognition and rights of their Aboriginal culture and people. This movement was occurring alongside South Sea Islander [blackbirder] descendants of the slaves that the crown had stolen from their island homes. Many of these South Sea Islander peoples were counted amongst the Boyd families closest friends in the Tweed, and together they shared the same struggle to overcome their own loss of connection and enslavement.

The Ngarkbal and Githabal peoples fought, just as their ancestors before them, to keep the embers of their ancient culture and lore alight…they did this by speaking out for the integrity of their ancestral lore to be respected and protected, intact….”talking up culture to save culture”….and never changing the Lore….they walked in truth and eventually they won….in 1967 they were declared human, but they never received possession of their ancestral lands.

Marlene Boyd’s tribal name was ‘Eelemarni’. She inherited the Fairy Emu ‘Bootheram’ Lore of her traditional landscape through her matrilineal lore, linage and kinship decadency, from her Ngarakwal grandmother Charlotte Brown. Like the true culture women before her, Marlene in her turn, held the title ‘Ellemarni’ and its Bootheram that links the two ancient volcano moieties of Ngarakbal and Githabal….

As Keeper of the Ancient Women’s business of Skin Lore, kinship, totem and descent that gives her people their connection to country.

Marlene Boyd was a living embodiment of one of the Seven Sisters. ‘Ellemarni’ was the ‘Gulgan’ (Keeper) of the Seven Sister’s creation lore and sites within her traditional landscape; and as ‘Ellemarni’ Marlene Boyd held the Seven Sisters creation song from the East Coast Volcano ….She was the Mountain, and would sing the first portion of the trans-continental song line of Australia from the point the sun first touched these ancient shores….this was her totemic skin-lore birthright. Like the women who came before her, Marlene was committed to feeding the fire of these ancient traditions despite many attempts to extinguish that flame. As ‘Ellemarni’ she brought the light of renewal and hope into this land for all of us.

Marlene Boyd was a true Lady. Proud of her identity and heritage, she continued to protect and fight to uphold the integrity of her matrilineal moieties ancient traditions and connections unbroken, to the very end of her life. Her sublime strength and determination to keep the women’s Eastern coastal flame alive has inspired people from all over the globe. And many have not hesitated to help her fan the embers of the sacred feminine – and care for country.

Her last film appearance in the film “the Gathering” achieved international recognition and awards. This same film won an award at the Byron Bay film Festival in 2007, just weeks before she passed.

She was a Sister, A Wife, A Mother, An Aunt, A Grand Mother, a Great Grand Mother, A Friend, A confidant, A mentor and A Teacher. But most importantly she was a Warrior for her people.

Marlene continued her mother’s works and her cultural responsibilities, doing business, walking in her truth….Walking Cultural truth…She passed over at 8.15am on the 22nd of February 2007, still fighting for the right of survival of her Ngarakbal culture in this modern post-colonial world…

She was much loved and respected for it.

Marlene is survived by her children and many beautiful Ngarakbal grandchildren and great grandchildren in whom the ancestral Bootheram lore traditions and legacy continue on unbroken…..And every morning, as the fire of mother sun lights the summit of Wollumbin sending out the lifeforce to every site across the land, we will remember her warmth, and nurturing and what she did for all of us….